martes, 29 de enero de 2013

Mexican archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) recently located and recorded a rock panel covered in petroglyphs that may have been carved between 850 and 1350 CE.

The site named “Cantil de las animas” [Ledge of Souls] is near the town of Jesus Maria Cortes in Tepic, Nayarit, Western Mexico.
The carved symbolic representations, which are attributed to the ancient Aztlan culture, were located in a new archaeological zone within the region’s mountainous zone, and they cover a south facing surface of vertical rock about 4 metres long and 2 metres high.

Symbolic images

The symbolic content of the engravings –recorded by archaeologist Mauricio Garduño Ambriz from INAH in Nayarit – seems to divide the petroglyph panel composition into two distinct parts.
Mauricio explained that, “In the eastern half we found designs related to fertility such as rain clouds, snail shell spirals, and vulvae – While in the western half, we found skull profiles who look to the east, towards sunrise.”
The petroglyph iconography is linked to a tradition of pictorial representation regarded as typically used by the Aztlan Culture, which flourished between 850 to 1350 CE along the lower coastal regions of the north of Nayarit and south of Sinaloa.
Archaeologist Mauricio Garduño also pointed out that within the “Cantil de las animas” petroglyphs it is also possible to recognize two distinct pictorial styles of Aztlan’s iconography, one with realistic or figurative representations of curved design, and another that is more schematic distinguished by rigid angular lines.

One of the human skulls in profile (highlighted). Image: Mauricio Garduño / INAH

Potential astronomical indicators

A further important aspect of the site that must be investigated, is to determine if it was also used as an astronomical indicator since the vertical level in which these designs are oriented is on an east-west axis.“Eventually, it will be necessary to make archaeological and astronomical observations to determine the precise date at which the sun passes through the petroglyphs, and to determine the function of this site in the annual ritual cycle.” commented Mauricio Garduño.
He also believes that the archaeological investigations and discoveries in the Nayarit region should be examined to determine if the the symbolic regionalisation of space has a link to patterns of settlement.

Looking to indigenous communities for clues

We must also recognize the contributions of ethnologists, who, since the 19th century, have been studying the indigenous communities in the region called Gran Nayar.to examine how it fits in with other known representations and ritual traditions.
The petroglyph panel discovered in “Cantil de las animas” is also important because it is located in a relatively unknown area in terms of archaeological investigation. Since initial archaeological rescue works that took place in the 90’s, in the basin of the Santiago and Huaynamota rivers, there has been no systematic exploration of the valleys and hills nearby.
The INAH in Nayarit has now announced that it will implement a program of survey to locate, record, investigate and register the unknown sites of the high plateau valleys, where a rich archaeological heritage remains to be discovered.
Source: INAH

Luke Harding in Sévaré
Islamist insurgents retreating from Timbuktu set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts, according to the Saharan town's mayor, in an incident he described as a "devastating blow" to world heritage.
Hallé Ousmani Cissé told the Guardian that al-Qaida-allied fighters on Saturday torched two buildings that held the manuscripts, some of which dated back to the 13th century. They also burned down the town hall, the governor's office and an MP's residence, and shot dead a man who was celebrating the arrival of the French military.
French troops and the Malian army reached the gates of Timbuktu on Saturday and secured the town's airport. But they appear to have got there too late to rescue the leather-bound manuscripts that were a unique record of sub-Saharan Africa's rich medieval history. The rebels attacked the airport on Sunday, the mayor said.
"It's true. They have burned the manuscripts," Cissé said in a phone interview from Mali's capital, Bamako. "They also burned down several buildings. There was one guy who was celebrating in the street and they killed him."
He added: "This is terrible news. The manuscripts were a part not only of Mali's heritage but the world's heritage. By destroying them they threaten the world. We have to kill all of the rebels in the north."
On Monday French army officers said French-led forces had entered Timbuktu and secured the town without a shot being fired. A team of French paratroopers crept into the town by moonlight, advancing from the airport, they said. Residents took to the streets to celebrate.
The manuscripts were held in two separate locations: an ageing library and a new South African-funded research centre, the Ahmad Babu Institute, less than a mile away. Completed in 2009 and named after a 17th-century Timbuktu scholar, the centre used state-of-the-art techniques to study and conserve the crumbling scrolls.
Both buildings were burned down, according to the mayor, who said the information came from an informer who had just left the town. Asked whether any of the manuscripts might have survived, Cissé replied: "I don't know."
The manuscripts had survived for centuries in Timbuktu, on the remote south-west fringe of the Sahara desert. They were hidden in wooden trunks, buried in boxes under the sand and in caves. When French colonial rule ended in 1960, Timbuktu residents held preserved manuscripts in 60-80 private libraries.
The vast majority of the texts were written in Arabic. A few were in African languages, such as Songhai, Tamashek and Bambara. There was even one in Hebrew. They covered a diverse range of topics including astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women's rights. The oldest dated from 1204.
Seydou Traoré, who has worked at the Ahmed Baba Institute since 2003, and fled shortly before the rebels arrived, said only a fraction of the manuscripts had been digitised. "They cover geography, history and religion. We had one in Turkish. We don't know what it said."
He said the manuscripts were important because they exploded the myth that "black Africa" had only an oral history. "You just need to look at the manuscripts to realise how wrong this is."
Some of the most fascinating scrolls included an ancient history of west Africa, the Tarikh al-Soudan, letters of recommendation for the intrepid 19th-century German explorer Heinrich Barth, and a text dealing with erectile dysfunction.
A large number dated from Timbuktu's intellectual heyday in the 14th and 15th centuries, Traoré said. By the late 1500s the town, north of the Niger river, was a wealthy and successful trading centre, attracting scholars and curious travellers from across the Middle East. Some brought books to sell.
Typically, manuscripts were not numbered, Traoré said, but repeated the last word of a previous page on each new one. Scholars had painstakingly numbered several of the manuscripts, but not all, under the direction of an international team of experts.
Mali government forces that had been guarding Timbuktu left the town in late March, as Islamist fighters advanced rapidly across the north. Fighters from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – the group responsible for the attack on the Algerian gas facility – then swept in and seized the town, pushing out rival militia groups including secular Tuareg nationalists.
Traoré told the Guardian that he decided to leave Timbuktu in January 2012 amid ominous reports of shootings in the area, and after the kidnapping of three European tourists from a Timbuktu hotel. A fourth tourist, a German, resisted and was shot dead. Months later AQIM arrived, he said.
Four or five rebels had been sleeping in the institute, which had comparatively luxurious facilities for staff, he said. As well as the manuscripts, the fighters destroyed almost all of the 333 Sufi shrines dotted around Timbuktu, believing them to be idolatrous. They smashed a civic statue of a man sitting on a winged horse. "They were the masters of the place," Traoré said.
Other residents who fled Timbuktu said the fighters adorned the town with their black flag. Written on it in Arabic were the words "God is great". The rebels enforced their own brutal and arbitrary version of Islam, residents said, with offenders flogged for talking to women and other supposed crimes. The floggings took place in the square outside the 15th-century Sankoré mosque, a Unesco world heritage site.
"They weren't religious men. They were criminals," said Maha Madu, a Timbuktu boatman, now in the Niger river town of Mopti. Madu said the fighters grew enraged if residents wore trousers down to their ankles, which they believed to be western and decadent. He alleged that some fighters kidnapped and raped local women, keeping them as virtual sex slaves. "They were hypocrites. They told us they couldn't smoke. But they smoked themselves," he said.
The rebels took several other towns south of Timbuktu, he said, including nearby Diré. If the rebels spotted a boat flying the Malian national flag, they ripped the flag off and replaced it with their own black one, he said.
The precise fate of the manuscripts was difficult to verify. All phone communication with Timbuktu was cut off. The town was said to be without electricity, water or fuel. According to Traoré, who was in contact with friends there until two weeks ago, many of the rebels left town following France's military intervention.
He added: "My friend [in Timbuktu] told me they were diminishing in number. He doesn't know where they went. But he said they were trying to hide their cars by painting and disguising them with mud."
The recapture of Timbuktu is another success for the French military, which has now secured two out of three of Mali's key rebel-held sites, including the city of Gao on Saturday. The French have yet to reach the third, Kidal. Local Tuareg militia leaders said on Monday they had taken control of Kidal after the abrupt departure of the Islamist fighters who ran the town.

Reaction 'It's an absolute tragedy'

Essop Pahad, who was chairman of the Timbuktu manuscripts projectfor the South African government, said: "I'm absolutely devastated, as everybody else should be. I can't imagine how anybody, whatever their political or ideological leanings, could destroy some of the most precious heritage of our continent. They could not be in their right minds.
"The manuscripts gave you such a fantastic feeling of the history of this continent. They made you proud to be African. Especially in a context where you're told that Africa has no history because of colonialism and all that. Some are in private hands but the fact is these have been destroyed and it's an absolute tragedy."
He added: "It's one of our greatest cultural treasure houses. It's also one of the great treasure houses of Islamic history. The writings are so forward-looking on marriage, on trade, on all sorts of things. If the libraries are destroyed then a very important part of African and world history are gone. I'm so terribly upset at hearing what's happened. I can't think of anything more terrible."
Riason Naidoo, who directed the Timbuktu manuscripts project, said he is still awaiting confirmation of the extent of the damage. "It would be a catastrophe if the reports are true," he said. "I just hope certain parts of the building are unharmed and the manuscripts are safe."
The then South African president, Thabo Mbeki, was inspired by the "intellectual treasure" while visiting Timbuktu in 2001, and initiated a joint project between the two countries. He attended the opening of the Ahmad Babu Institute in 2009. A spokeswoman for the Thabo Mbeki Foundation said on Monday: "We haven't yet heard anything concrete as to what the real story is, so at the moment we can't really comment. We're getting mixed stories."David Smith

Treasures from the very beginnings of Egyptian history will be on show at
Lancaster City Museum from Saturday 2nd February.

'From Egypt's Sands
to Northern Hills' features a wide range of stunning artefacts spanning a
period of more than 3,000 years, brought together from collections across the
north west.

The exhibition focuses on objects relating to everyday life
and the afterlife, which was central to the religion of ancient Egypt. All
ancient Egyptians, from Pharaohs to farmers, believed in the afterlife and spent
their lives preparing for it.

"All of the relics on show were discovered
by Professor John Garstang while excavating in Egypt on behalf of Liverpool
University between 1900 and 1914," explains Heather Dowler, Lancashire County
Council's museum manager at the city museum.

Blackburn-born Garsatng was
Professor of Archaeology at Liverpool University from 1907 until 1941 and, in
addition to his work in Egypt, also carried out excavations at Roman sites in
Britain, Nubia and Northern Syria.

"Professor Garstang mainly
excavated in cemeteries, which means the objects he retrieved were often of high
quality and very well-preserved.

"Among the objects were beautifully
decorated vessels, stone statuettes of ordinary soldiers and a very impressive
array of wooden masks. Many of these objects are included in this fantastic
exhibition."

The exhibition also features a series of free,
family-friendly events, including activities for half-term:

Saturday 2
February, 1.30pm to 3.30pm: mark the opening of the exhibition by having a go at
making your own Egyptian Mask like those worn by mummified Pharaohs.

*'Pyramid Builder' - Monday 18 February 10.30am to 12pm and 1pm-2.30pm
Build your very own Egyptian Pyramid and discover how these impressive
structures were built.

*'Mummy Mayhem' - Tuesday 19 Feb! ruary 10.30am
to 12pm and 1pm to 2.30pm: discover how mummies are made and make your own
Egyptian Mummy puppet.

'Cartouche Crazy' - Thursday 21 February 10.30am
to 12pm and 1pm to 2.30pm: discover how to write like an Egyptian. Use
hieroglyphics and make your own Egyptian cartouche out of clay.

Meet an
Archaeologist' - Friday 22 February 10.30am to 12pm and 1pm to 2.30pm: find out
about our Victorian archaeologist's awesome discoveries in Egypt and have a go
at becoming an archaeologist yourself!

(This type of session needs to be
booked, as it is often oversubscribed. If you are unable to attend once you have
booked, please let the museum know so that someone else can fill your place.)

The exhibition was developed with financial support from Renaissance
North West, and is the result of a project to develop a better understanding of
Professor Garstang's legacy.

Alongside the exhibits, a display of
photographs offers a fascinating insight into what life was like on Garstang's
expeditions to Egypt before the First World War.

Lancaster City
Museum is run by Lancashire County Council on behalf of Lancaster City Council.

lunes, 28 de enero de 2013

Adam Westlake
A team of archaeologists and researchers have discovered an ancient Chinese arrowhead in western Japan’s Okayama Prefecture, the first of its kind, they say, to be unearthed in the country. Made of bronze, the ancient weapon has been dated as far back as 475 BC to 221 BC, a time in ancient Chinese history known as the warring states period.

The scientists formally describe the artifact as a “double-winged bronze arrowhead,” and say it was dug up in the Minamigata ruins located in Okayama City. The arrowhead measures half an inch (1.3 centimeters) wide and 1.4 inches long (3.5 cm) long. Interestingly it was found alongside the remains of several artifacts from Japan’s Iron Age, including fragments of pottery and stone tools dating to 300 BC to 100 BC, or the Yayoi period.
Archaeologists say the double-winged shape is a distinctive style of manufacturing from that period in ancient China. When it comes to understanding how to came to Japan, they believe it would have been imported with care by someone with influence. An Okayama City official adds that there would be a significant gap between when it was made in China and when it was actually used in Japan. This adds to the theory that the arrowhead was more likely used as a ritual or burial item rather than a weapon

Marine archaeologists working on a
wreck off the coast of Sicily have discovered five large cannon from a British
ship, believed to have sunk in a major battle with Spanish galleons.

The team searching waters near the city of Syracuse said the "exceptional"
find dates back to the Battle of Cape Passaro in the early 1700s.
Pictures taken by divers show the cannon were barely covered by sand.
The discovery has helped pinpoint the exact location of the famous battle.
The cannon have now been brought to the surface - after 300 years in the deep
sea - and cleaned.
According to the archaeologists, they are in such fine condition that - in
some places - the barrels still gleam in the light.
The team said they were able to identify the guns using part of an
inscription on the handle of a piece of cutlery also discovered nearby.
The letters LONDO were found under what appeared to be a picture of an
English rose, clearly indicating the word London - they said.
This and other evidence has convinced the researchers that the cannon came
from a British vessel sunk at the Battle of Cape Passaro in 1718.
The battle involved more than 60 ships and ended in defeat for the Spanish.
At the time, the British were attempting to drive them out of Sicily.

Experts at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) are in the process of analysing Indian Buddhist texts that are over 2000-year-old which have recently come to light. The precious manuscripts have already yielded some surprising results.

Birch-bark manuscript. Image LMU

The texts of Ghandara

The oldest surviving Buddhist texts, preserved on long rolls of birch-tree bark, are written in Gandhari, an early regional Indic language that is long extinct. The scrolls originate from the region known in ancient times as Gandhara, which lies in what is now Northwestern Pakistan.
For researchers interested in the early history of Buddhism, these manuscripts represent a sensational find, for a number of reasons.
The first is their age. Some of the documents date from the first century BC, making them by far the oldest examples of Indian Buddhist literature. But for the experts, their contents are equally fascinating. The texts provide insights into a literary tradition which was thought to have been irretrievably lost, and they help researchers to reconstruct crucial phases in the development of Buddhism in India. Furthermore, the scrolls confirm the vital role played by the Gandhara region in the spread of Buddhism into Central Asia and China.

Restore, conserve, digitise, edit

At LMU a team of researchers led by Indological scholar Professor Jens-Uwe Hartmann and Professor Harry Falk of the Free University of Berlin has just begun the arduous job of editing the manuscripts.
Most of the texts survive only as fragments, which must first be collated and reassembled. The magnitude of the task is reflected in the planned duration of the project – 21 years.
The project of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities is being funded by a total grant of 8.6 million euros from the Academies Program, that is coordinated by the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. It is one of the largest research programs in the field of the Humanities in the Federal Republic.

Fragile resource online

The research is not with the manuscripts themselves, but with digital scans. The originals are not only extremely fragile, but are held in various collections scattered around the world.
A large proportion of the surviving material is stored in the British Library in London.
The ultimate goal of the project is to prepare a modern edition of all the Gandhari manuscripts, making them available for further investigation and research. In addition, the researchers plan to produce a dictionary of the Gandhari language and it’s grammar based on the contents of these documents.
However, the project will be primarily concerned with illuminating the development of Gandhari literature and the history of Buddhism in Gandhara. It is already clear that the results will lead to a new understanding of the earliest phases of Buddhism in India.

Birch-bark manuscript in the Kharosthi script. Image British Library

Opening up new knowledge

Discoveries of these documents continue to be made and the understanding of the script and people is revolutionized by the recovery of 77 long birch-bark scrolls and around 300 palm-leaf manuscript fragments from Buddhist monasteries in the Gandhāran heartland.
Birch bark (bhoja-patra), like palm leaf, was a primary material used in India for writing before the introduction of paper and most of these early manuscripts have been destroyed, but accounts in ancient Greek literature even reveal birch bark’s usage in India at the time of Alexander’s invasion.
The oldest extant examples date to the 2nd or 3rd century CE, written with black ink in variants of the Sanskrit script. A recent publication on these manuscripts from the British Library states: “As the Dead Sea Scrolls have changed our understanding of Judaism and early Christianity, so early sets of scroll fragments promise to improve knowledge of the history of Buddhism.”
At the core of the project is the construction of a comprehensive database in which all relevant information and results are collected, stored and linked together. The database will serve as the major source of electronic and printed publications on the topic, and regular updates will give the international research community access to the latest results
Source: LMU Munich

More Information

Archaeology of the Southern Taklamakan: Hedin and Stein’s Legacy and New ExplorationsIDP, The British Library and SOAS 8th-10th November, 2012
Presentation on the The Kharoṣṭhī Documents from Niya and Their Contribution to Gāndhārī Studies by Stefan Baums Download Audio & Presentation zip 62.1MB

sábado, 26 de enero de 2013

Two skeletons discovered at Lake Eufaula are "ancient" human remains, according to investigators.
The Oklahoma State Medical Examiners office says the remains could be anywhere from 200 to 2,000 years old, or even beyond.
The ME's office was able to make that determination based on marks on the teeth that are consistent with the type of food ancient humans ate.
The two skeletons, which included skulls and back bones, were discovered as a result of the lingering drought that's caused the lake level to recede.
Pittsburg County Sheriff Joel Kerns said investigators found a cable with a cinder block near the remains, but that appears to have been just a coincidence.
Kerns says several visitors to the lake called to report the remains.
In cases like this, it's customary for investigators to compare the remains to any missing persons reports in the area.
The highest profile missing persons case in that area involves the Jamison family, who disappeared in 2009.

Archaeologists have unearthed a trove of skulls in Mexico that may have once belonged to human sacrifice victims. The skulls, which date between A.D. 600 and 850, may also shatter existing notions about the ancient culture of the area.

The find, described in the January issue of the journal Latin American Antiquity, was located in an otherwise empty field that once held a vast lake, but was miles from the nearest major city of the day, said study co-author Christopher Morehart, an archaeologist at Georgia State University.

"It's absolutely remarkable to think about this little nothing on the landscape having potentially evidence of the largest mass human sacrifice in ancient Meso-America," Morehart said.

Middle of nowhere

Morehart and his colleagues were using satellite imagery to map ancient canals, irrigation channels and lakes that used to surround the kingdom of Teotihuacan (home to the Pyramid of the Sun), about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Mexico City. The vast ancient kingdom flourished from around A.D 200 to 650, though who built it remains a mystery. [In Photos: Amazing Ruins of the Ancient World]

In a now drained lake called Lake Xaltocan, around which was essentially rural farmland at the time, Morehart stumbled upon a site with evidence of looting.

When the team investigated, they discovered lines of human skulls with just one or two vertebra attached. To date, more than 150 skulls have been discovered there. The site also contained a shrine with incense burners, water-deity figurines and agricultural pottery, such as corncob depictions, suggesting a ritual purpose tied to local farming.

Carbon dating suggested that the skulls were at least 1,100 years old, and the few dozen analyzed so far are mostly from men, Morehart told LiveScience. The researchers did not release photos of the skulls because the sacrifice victims may have historic ties to modern-day indigenous cultures.

The findings shake up existing notions of the culture of the day, because the site is not associated with Teotihuacan or other regional powers, said Destiny Crider, an archaeologist at Luther College in Iowa, who was not involved in the study.

Human sacrifice was practiced throughout the region, both at Teotihuacan and in the later Aztec Empire, but most of those rituals happened at great pyramids within cities and were tied to state powers.
By contrast, "this one is a big event in a little place," Crider said.
The shrines and the fact that sacrifice victims were mostly male suggest they were carefully chosen, not simply the result of indiscriminate slaughter of a whole village, Crider told LiveScience.
Many researchers believe that massive drought caused the fall of Teotihuacan and ushered in a period of warfare and political infighting as smaller regional powers sprang up, Morehart said.
Those tumultuous times could have spurred innovative — and bloody — practices, Crider said.

"Maybe they needed to intensify their activities because everything was changing," she said. "When things are uncertain you try new strategies."

martes, 22 de enero de 2013

The Celts were long considered a barbaric and violent society. But new findings from a 2,600-year-old grave in Germany suggest the ancient people were much more sophisticated than previously thought.

The little Bettelbühl stream on the Danube River was completely unknown, except to local residents. But that changed in the summer of 2010 when a spectacular discovery was made just next to the creek.
Not far from the Heuneburg, the site of an early Celtic settlement, researchers stumbled upon the elaborate grave of a Celtic princess. In addition to gold and amber, they found a subterranean burial chamber fitted with massive oak beams. It was an archeological sensation that, after 2,600 years, the chamber was completely intact.

Nicole Ebinger-Rist hopes to find out who the princess was

The wooden construction was preserved by the constant flow of water from the Bettelbühl stream. "In dry ground, the wood wouldn't have had a chance to survive over so many centuries," said Nicole Ebinger-Rist, the director of the research project handling the find.

A life of luxury?
Since the rings in the wood allow them to date the other items in the burial chamber, researchers are now hoping to gain a new understanding of Celtic culture and history
The result could change our view of the Celts. Roman writers in particular described the heterogeneous people as barbaric, only excelling in violence and war. But that's a distorted view, according to Dirk L. Krausse from Baden-Wurttemberg's state office for historic preservation.
"There's also a bit of propaganda involved, since the Celts conquered Rome in the year 387 B.C., so they couldn't have been so primitive," Krausse explained. The findings at the Heuneburg near Hundersingen also indicate that the Celts living in the upper Danube region were more advanced than previously thought.

The Heuneburg was an important hub for the Celts

The Heuneburg is a center of Celtic culture in south-western Germany. In its heyday, giant security walls in the area protected a city of as many as 10,000 people. Wealthy members of society led lives of luxury: Etruscan gold jewelry, Greek wine, and Spanish tableware were all traded here. The Celtic princess's grave supports the hypothesis that her people were interested in culture and comfort.
Elaborate pearl earrings, solid gold clasps, an amber necklace and a bronze belt are just some of the findings from the grave that baffle the archeologists.
"We find objects here everyday that we cannot categorize at this time," Krausse said.Archeologist's playground
The burial chamber is not only well preserved - but also full. In most cases, archeologists find themselves digging up graves that were plundered by thieves years ago. But here, stacks of burial objects made of gold, amber, jet and bronze were discovered alongside the skeletons of the princess and an unidentified child.
It quickly became clear, however, that it would be a huge challenge to retrieve the treasures. So specialists were called upon to place a steel frame around the burial chamber and lift it out of the gravel and onto a heavy truck. The findings were then transported to a laboratory near Stuttgart, where they are now being examined in painstaking detail.

Transporting the burial chamber was a tricky undertaking

Archeologists, restorers, excavation experts, anthropologists and botanists are all investigating the 3.6-by-4.6-meter (roughly 12-by-15-foot) burial chamber, Nicole Ebinger-Rist said. "The colleagues here lie on their bellies and look down into the depths, suspended over the findings," she explained.Who was she?
Every single centimeter of the find is examined with brushes, tweezers, and scrapers. "This space, which had been furnished with a lot of different objects, has shrunk to just a few millimeters due to the pressure of the earth," Ebinger-Rist said. Lasers and scanners allow the researchers to create a 3D computer image of what the burial chamber originally looked like.
In addition to the gold and amber jewelry, the researchers are also particularly interested in the plant and animal remains found in the chamber. "The organic material is actually just as important as the artifacts because it gives us information about their burial rituals," Ebinger-Rist added.
When the excavation of the grave is completed this spring, the six-person team will begin two years of detailed research. For Ebinger-Rist, the priority is to uncover the identity of the buried princess. "We call her a princess, but we actually know very little about the social organization of the time because we don't have any written sources."

Attention to detail is crucial during restoration work at the ancient Celtic burial chamber

History's big mystery
The researches are also hoping to learn more about the Celts' wars of domination - one of the greatest mysteries of central European history. Experts still don't know why the Celts were advancing quickly from the sixth century B.C. until the birth of Christ and then abruptly disappeared from the scene.
Should that mystery be solved, then the tiny Bettelbühl creek in south-western Germany will also go down in history. Without its steady flow, the princess's burial chamber likely wouldn't have survived its 2,600-year sleep.

KARKEMISH, TURKEY — The Syrian civil war is not the first conflict to complicate Professor Nicolò Marchetti’s efforts to turn Karkemish, an ancient city site on the banks of the Euphrates, on Turkey’s southern border and inside a restricted military zone, into a public archaeology park.

Before his team started digging, under the watchful eyes of armed Turkish soldiers, he had to make sure that land mines planted in the 1950s had all been cleared away.

Mr. Marchetti — a tanned and lanky version of Hollywood’s Indiana Jones, who teaches Near Eastern, or pre-classical, archaeology at the University of Bologna — has led excavations at Karkemish on and off for two years after being granted the first access allowed to anyone in decades.

The aim is to open a first stage to tourism by October 2014. That goal remains realistic, he said during a tour of the site late last year. Still, conflict has had a way over the years of interrupting excavations here.

First identified by the British Museum archaeologist George Smith in 1876 as the kingdom of Karkemish mentioned in the Bible, the site was later explored with permission of the Ottoman sultan by a team that included David G. Hogarth, C. L. Woolley and T.E. Lawrence — later known as Lawrence of Arabia. They found Assyrian and Hittite temples, palaces and hieroglyphics. Some of their discoveries went to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, the Louvre in Paris, and the British Museum in London.

Their work was halted by World War I. The dig briefly reopened in 1920 but was then closed again by fighting between the Turks and occupying French troops.

When the dust settled, about a third of the 90-hectare, or 220-acre, ancient city of Karkemish was in Syria.

The entire settlement, on both sides of the border, is classified as an endangered cultural site by the Global Heritage Fund, a nonprofit organization based in Palo Alto, California. But war is no respecter of culture: This month, NATO is preparing to place U.S. Patriot missile batteries in Gaziantep Province, where Karkemish is located, to ward off attack from Syria — though military officials say the deployment will be at least 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, from the site and will not affect it.

Today’s Karkemish in some ways resembles other digs that dot the rural Eastern Anatolia landscape, like Gobekli Tepe and Catalhoyuk, with their own remarkable traces of early civilizations. But as members of Mr. Marchetti’s team crouched recently in a clearing to clean and consolidate the surface cracks of a limestone carving from 1000 B.C., a worker could be seen checking for mines along a distant ridge.

“There are many reasons why this place is important,” Mr. Marchetti said last autumn before sitting down to a grilled meat and eggplant banquet prepared by local villagers. “It’s a huge site, it’s enormous, it’s on the Euphrates: that would be enough. But there’s much more of course.”

The roughly $250,000 2012 budget for the joint Turkish-Italian expedition was paid for by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Italian Ministry for Education and The University of Bologna, along with a $30,000 grant for conservation from the G.H.F.

The team is due to return to the site in August. Experts say every hit of the pick could add to what is known about the Iron Age residents and rulers of Karkemish, who grew wealthy by trading commodities like wine and honey, horses and slaves. Most of the finds date from the Iron Age phase between 1000 and 700 B.C., Mr. Marchetti said.

Items like pottery shards are clues to food storage methods, and ornaments including a gold earring and lapis lazuli necklaces reveal the level of craftsmanship.

The settlement, he explained, included an acropolis, an inner town walled by ramparts that are pierced by two gates, and an outer town with a double wall and two more gates, both of which now lie in Syria. A so-called Water Gate allowed entry from the Euphrates along a road that led to a palace and two temples and to a grand staircase up to the acropolis. The mound where the upper royal citadel was situated is now home to the Turkish military barracks, watchtower and helicopter landing pad.

Archaeologists have been able to reveal a group of town houses where wealthy merchants may have lived, and a Neo-Assyrian cremation burial ground outside the city. Also found were items that tell of city government and the commercial role of Karkemish, including cylinder or stamp seals used by officials and merchants, some even engraved onto semi-precious gems.

Thus far, the most significant discovery by the Marchetti team, which includes experts from Gaziantep University and Istanbul University, is a palace built near 900 B.C. by the ruler Katuwa.

The palace remained in use, Mr. Marchetti said, through the Assyrian conquest in 717 B.C. It remained in Assyrian hands until the defeat in 605 B.C. by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

“We dug for more than one month,” Mr. Marchetti said by e-mail this week. “Then slowly the structures of the palace began to appear. However, they were badly damaged to the west and only became better preserved while we proceeded to the east.”

But time ran out as the 2012 excavation season drew to a close, setting up what he called “the greatest expectations” for when the team returns this summer. “It takes sometimes years to uncover a monument and only in retrospect do you sense the full meaning of what has been achieved,” Mr. Marchetti said. “I think we may finish the palace in 2014 if our hypothesis on its layout is correct. And we already have another hypothesis on where a second palace may be located.”

One “eureka” moment came when Mr. Marchetti almost literally stumbled upon a two-meter-high stele inscribed by King Suhi I from around 975 B.C.

It was “my first day ever at the site,” he said. Permission from the Turkish military had just come through and he entered the area with a government inspector and a soldier. “I noted a large, regular black stone on surface, went close, and remained breathless staring at an almost intact monolith,” he said. “Stanley Kubrick would have liked it.”

He said he figured it was important because a winged disk, an exclusive symbol of a great king, was clearly visible on the top.

“I had entered with a pick in one hand and a camera in the other, and this is how we discovered the stele, lying on the ground,” he added.

To read the inscriptions, the team relies on people like David Hawkins, a professor emeritus at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, who is an authority on Anatolian hieroglyphic writing, and “a real living legend in our field,” Mr. Marchetti said, along with the dig’s deputy director, the philologist Hasan Peker of Istanbul University.

“Hasan is a hero,” Mr. Marchetti said, describing another day at the dig. “He jumped high when I passed over to him a seemingly unimportant inscribed bit in basalt, and he cried, ‘Hey, we have new king of Karkemish here! See his royal title? We know of no other king whose name begins with this syllable.”’

Other finds include additional pieces from the Iron Age, the early Bronze Age, and even modern times with the discovery of a shovel thought to have been used by Lawrence himself.

The team also recovered a small bronze statue of a dog; a sculpted limestone torso that used to be attached to a head found by the Woolley team; and a 20-centimeter, or 8-inch, bronze statue of a storm god, an important deity for people who relied on rain to grow crops. (While this god often is depicted holding a thunderbolt, the statue found at Karkemish carried a silver dagger.)

“We think our main scientific duty here is reconstructing material in order to produce more a detailed historical framework,” he said.

Karkemish “was very important,” he said. “At that time, it was one of the rivals of Babylon and was making history because of its power, because of its location, because of the trading route which it controlled.”

The stele, for example, “in one shot filled up a new page of history,” Mr. Marchetti said, on a period about which very little was known. Its references to the great kings and more local rulers to whom the kings eventually ceded power, he said, give “a tantalizing glimpse into some detailed power structure of which we still do not grasp the essentials. We can actually follow two lines of the power structure in later inscriptions found at Karkemish in the old days. What we know and the mass of evidence changes a little every day with our excavations.”

But Mr. Marchetti has plans beyond the scientific for developing Karkemish as a public park, despite the obstacles.

That the Turkish authorities respect Mr. Marchetti, who fluently speaks what he calls “village Turkish,” seems to have played an incalculable role in making the site available.

“He is very appreciated by the local authorities,” the Italian ambassador to Turkey, Gianpaolo Scarante, said during a visit to the dig, “because he is a serious man, has an excellent reputation with the local people. He is a friend of everyone here. For an archaeologist, it’s very important. ”

“Everything is more difficult now,” Mr. Scarante said, “not because of politics, but because the site is in a delicate geographical position. But the Turkish authorities are trying, are doing their best, to permit us to go on.”

Thus Mr. Marchetti’s second goal is a more social one: to help the locals who have welcomed him and his team by helping to create a sustainable source of income and inspiration that will last beyond the current excavations. The region around Gaziantep is primarily agricultural, and much of the economy, aside from smuggling, has been devastated by the loss of trade with Syrians who used to stream across the border to shop.

Two young Italian architects, Alessandra Giacardi and Massimo Ferrando, will help develop what Mr. Marchetti called a “master plan” that melds conservation and public presentation, letting visitors “walk on ancient streets in an original environment that protects the local heritage and, in a local community that has no industries other than farming, creates some badly needed alternatives so that the younger generation isn’t forced to leave the area.”

With the support of the fund in California, the project also calls for the opening of a school for restoration, the education of local guides, and development of a high-quality venue for selling local produce and rejuvenated local crafts.

“By bringing people to the site, by letting them stand on the site, creating an interest in the site, we can keep the area socially inhabited,” Mr. Marchetti said. “We do not think Karkemish as a laboratory. It’s a journey through time, it forces new dialogues. We are trying to make a mark.”